After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  “Quite right,” she said, the corner of her mouth pulling to make a little half smile. Gods help me, but it brought Gram to mind, and with everything else rushing around in my head I thought I might not find my way through the wash of grief what hit me from behind with it. “You’re very clever, Ginna. Finnarún said so. You must understand—she’s warned me, you see. There are forces—I can’t trust this message to a robot, it might be intercepted. And I’d never know. No. I can only have you deliver it, and only to Úlfketill. No one else, do you understand?”

  “Local Group Leader Úlfketill,” I murmured.

  “Precisely. He’s an ally of F—Jarldis Vaenn,” Leika said. “She promised me I can trust him in this. My condition—well, you know it isn’t widely known, and if word got out I was seeking some medicine—well, I can’t imagine what might happen. There are those who wish me ousted, who claim—who have the audacity to claim that Eiflar—but those are all lies. And still others object to my retaining the throne simply because I am alone, a woman alone.” Her face darkened at that, and I reckoned she weren’t sure about it herself. She always prayed to Tyr. Everything she believed was in the Book of Tyr. Under the laws of that book, she weren’t a legitimate ruler.

  But I knew I had my way outside, now, and if my plans come right, I’d change her mind about that, and no mistake.

  ~~~

  Though it weren’t the first time I’d left—there was the time I’d met Finnarún, don’t you know—I’d not realized how much the city’d changed in the months since the invasion. Not really. Now I had to make my way to Godahúshá, the district just to the northeast of the palace, where the Temple was. I’d seen the new Temple from far away, but now I come towards it, riding in one of the konungdis’s automobiles, sure, but I stepped out and it stood over me like the monster it was. All around, the streets were clean—I’d never had much cause to go to Godahúshá ’fore Leika’s invasion on account of Atli ruled it, but I’d seen enough of the outskirts traveling through Midborghá, what lay just to the east of the southern end of Godahúshá, to know it weren’t in any better shape than any other part of the city.

  You’d never know that now.

  It made me wonder about the temple to Freyja, and the women I’d met there, and whether any of them’d survived the bombings and the invasion. I’d not been anywhere near Vitraust since I’d left them behind to find my family. I’d no idea whether the Freyjan temple still stood, though I’d a guess it didn’t. Leika and her people weren’t going to allow temples to other gods anymore’n they did ’fore the city fell, wouldn’t you know. Helésey belonged to Tyr again, just as if He’d never left.

  I stared up at His Temple. Its three spires thrust black into the sky; they were covered in twists of metal I supposed were meant to be decorative, but made the whole thing look like a right nightmare. Was a time I’d never have dreamt of coming within a city block of the old Temple, and now look at me, fixing to walk right in and ask to see a Local Group Leader, who like as not would throw me in Grumflein for my cheek. He’d have no trouble placing my speech, and that’s a fact.

  Every muscle in my body felt stiff as the iron rods of the building, and I had a time of it making myself walk towards it stead of running the other direction. And finding the nearest stairs to the Undergrunnsby, heading down, and never coming back up again. But then, I’d be in the Undergrunnsby soon enough, as long as Group Leader Úlfketill seen fit not to arrest me, and I weren’t sure how I’d feel about it when I did get down there, anyhow.

  In the time ’fore the city fell lots of folks richer’n me used to go to the Temple and give offerings in exchange for prayers—and more practical interventions—on the part of the Officers of Tyr. Used to be, most days, you’d see a long line of supplicants what filed into the west door, each waiting their turn. Now, there weren’t any line of folk. What with the cleaning up of the rubble and such, it made it much more obvious the city was more’n half empty. Lots of folk got out soon as the Rising started; anyone with any money was the first to go, on account of they could afford passage on boats and such even with the captains raising the prices to match the times. Lots more folk got killed in the bombings, too. Used to be you seen dead bodies everywhere—just after the Tyrablót and the first waves of fighting the gore was hard to escape, and no mistake. When the battles ended and everything settled down, no one took much time to clean anything up, you mind, but as the spring wore on the rain washed the streets a bit though it did nowt to help the smell. Then it was summer and everything dried up, even the bodies. By the time Ivarr gave me the Elga you’d not have known one of them bodies even if you stepped on it; they never looked much like anything human anymore, except maybe for the skulls. Now, of course, the Officers were cleaning all of that away, long with the concrete and iron and glass, everything what made the city look ruined. But they’d no way to restore the people what’d died or just run away.

  I might’ve felt safer had there been a line of folk to join, but since there weren’t, I had to suck in as much air as I could and fist my hands at my sides and walk, legs stiff and fighting me, into the nearest door to the Temple, all on my’n.

  There were two robots, one on each side of the door, their metal panels dyed a shining purple, the edges of them black. They paid me no mind as I crossed the threshold of the too-tall door, though the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as though they watched me after I passed. Beyond the door was a grand hall, floored with black marble. The right wall was one great glass and ironwork window. Against the left wall, which was covered in purple fabric all patterned with comfrey leaves, stood a long desk of black wood.

  Standing in the Temple of Tyr, Ginna-my-girl. Well, you have lost your way this time.

  Oh, Amma. You don’t know the half of it.

  An Officer stood behind the desk, ruffling papers of some sort or other. I licked my lips and took another deep breath, then walked straight over like I was the konungdis herself.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and his face shot up to look at me like I’d fired a gun by his ear. I pressed on, “I’m sent to speak with Local Group Leader Úlfketill.”

  I didn’t wait for him to balk, and brung out the first note Leika gave me, what bore her seal and everything.

  The Officer must have thought he was losing his mind, sure enough. A sewer rat carrying the konungdis’s mail—he stared at me, and I could tell the clothes never fooled him. He knew my speech for what it was, and no mistake. But then he looked at the seal, and he frowned. I seen suspicions cross his mind—his eyes narrowed, don’t you know, and he glanced up quick-like once or twice from the note, which I knew by heart, having written it with my’n hand and recited it to myself about a hundred times in the car over: My agent is to speak with Local Group Leader Úlfketill, and him alone. � Leika-Konungdis. Course the fact it was written in my hand, which was hardly the hand of a konungdis, probably only confused the Officer all the more. Had I stolen this note from the rightful agent? Should he risk accusing me, on the outside chance I was the legitimate agent? And I seen the decision in the release of his shoulders, the snort of breath from his nose: not his problem. He’d send me along.

  I lifted my chin just as he looked up from the note, giving him my best “I’m just as good as you” glare.

  “Very well,” he said. “You’ll go through that door.” He pointed to one of three on the far side of the hall. “Walk past the first junction, and there will be a lift. Take it to the fourteenth floor. You’ll find Group Leader Úlfketill there.”

  I did as he said, though more’n once I had to catch my breath for some Officer of Tyr’d be walking in the other direction, and part of me was just waiting for one to stop and grab me, saying I was under arrest. It made no difference I’d not broken a law or nothing; it made no difference that the konungdis really had sent me and I weren’t lying about any of it. They would know me for who I really was, even if Leika never did. And they’d put me where they thought I belonged, sure enough: Grumflein. />
  Or maybe they’d dispense with the preliminaries and just execute me right here.

  Course, they’d not want a stain on this nice purple carpet.

  The tension was making me want to laugh, and it weren’t a good idea to give into that. I cast about for something to think of, and decided to recite the third verse of the Lukasenna under my breath. Was a time I thought myself chosen of Luka, after all, even if I weren’t sure now that’d ever been so. So I muttered it soft as I could, and sure enough, it helped. I always liked that verse—it was the first where Luka started insulting the other gods—so I just repeated it from the beginning as I entered the lift, what was all gilded and fancy, and felt the strange tug of it as it started rising up.

  By the time I’d come to the end of the verse for the fifth time, I was walking through the too-tall doors to the right of where the lift stopped on the fourteenth floor. Beyond them there was a room with about a dozen tables and an Officer at each. The tables all had telephones—a machine I’d only heard of ’fore joining Finnarún in the palace, you mind—and telegraph machines, as well. Some had more little machines, and the Officers at them tables punched buttons on them, making a racket I’d never encountered ’fore now. Now and then one of them’d pull a sheet of paper out and put in a new one. I peered over at the nearest table with one of them machines and seen the papers he’d pulled out were covered in neat lines of writing, like what you’d see in a modern book. For a moment, I forgot everything else—Leika’s notes, the Temple of Tyr, the Elga—all of it. I’d wondered more’n once about that writing, for it was so perfect. So straight and clean and every a look just alike to every other a and so on. But I’d never thought it was machines what made that writing. My heart beat like a drum at the realization. Machines what wrote for you—and my writing was always so terrible, for I’d only just learned to write when we left Gronicks for the Undergrunnsby and after that I’d little call for using it—I read much more’n I wrote in those days, wouldn’t you know. I’d cause to be thankful Leika was blind, she’d no way to know the letters I wrote for her looked like they did. Luka’s Chains, my writing was improving with all the practice, but it made me laugh a bit to myself, imagining the looks on the courtiers’ face what got a letter I wrote for her. But a machine—I could make them perfect lines of clean words just like these Officers did, if I had one of them machines.

  “Here,” I said to the nearest Officer on one of them. “What’d you call one of these?”

  He blinked at me through thick glasses. “A typewriter.”

  “Typewriter,” I said, and I liked the way it felt in my mouth.

  “May I help you?” he asked, and not nice like you might think from the phrasing.

  “I’m to meet with Group Leader Úlfketill,” I said, showing him the note.

  It weren’t as easy to read his face as the last Officer, on account of the glasses, but I’d a fair impression he went through the same thoughts ’fore he jerked his thumb towards the door on the other side of the room.

  “Ain’t someone going to announce me?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, his mouth getting a pinched look to it. “Just go in.”

  I looked around the room one more time, and reckoned if I spoke to match my clothes, someone’d used their telephone to tell the Group Leader I was coming. But under the circumstances I supposed I ought to be thankful they were letting me see him at all, even if it was clear the Officer with the glasses and all the rest wanted no part in letting me by.

  I walked with a purpose through the room and gave the door a hard push. It swung open hard and I had to jerk to catch it so’s it wouldn’t slam against the wall with the force. A startled looking Officer, middle-aged and balding, stood up behind a desk beyond it.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  I shut the door with more care’n was probably completely necessary, but after the way I knocked it open more care seemed the right way to go.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m terrible sorry, sir. It’s been something of a difficult day,” I said, and reached the note out to him.

  He took it, frowned at it, frowned at me, and then frowned at it again.

  I took the opportunity to dig out the second note and hand that to him. I’d written that one for Leika, as well. It said: Local Group Leader Úlfketill, I am told you are a friend to me. I have a favor to ask of you, if so. I do hope my trust is not misplaced. I need you to locate an outlaw of some repute—in fact thought dead for these many months, but rumor has come to my ears of his true status. It is said he resides under the city, in some chamber in the sewers. I want him arrested, and the contents of the chamber seized and delivered in its entirety, to me. � Leika-Konungdis.

  As he read that one his frown changed so’s his eyebrows rose, a little higher with each moment he looked at it. By the time he was done I thought they’d crawl right off his face, given a chance.

  He looked up from the note and at me.

  “Who in Luka’s name are you?” he demanded.

  “No one special, sir,” I said. “Just a helper to her Majesty.”

  “A helper?” he scoffed. “If Leika-Konungdis has a sewer-rat helping her the world really has gone irretrievably mad.”

  He marched around his desk to come stare me in the eyes. He weren’t much taller’n me, so while he did make me nervous, if he was trying to intimidate me with his size, it weren’t working. I’d had Styrlakker give me the hairy eyeball more’n once, don’t you know, and that was fair different’n this.

  “Who are you really? How did you come by this correspondence?” He glanced over my shoulder at the door, and I could fair hear his thoughts and feel his intention to call in the Officers outside to have me arrested.

  “I wrote them letters for the konungdis,” I said.

  That stopped him, though I could tell he didn’t know what to do with that information.

  “I could write something now,” I suggested. “You’ll see, sure enough, it’s my hand.”

  Úlfketill walked slowly to his desk and handed me a fountain pen from it, along with a small white card. I wrote a line from the Book of Tyr, thinking it was probably the safest choice. All praise to Tyr, the highest and only true God.

  He scowled at the card and then at me.

  “You must have stolen some—some blank notes of her Majesty’s, perhaps she’d already placed her seal on them—yes, and written the notes—”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but how in Hel would I’ve gotten my dirty sewer-rat hands on blank notes with the konungdis’s seal on’em? I can tell you for a fact she don’t put her seal on anything ’til it’s written. She’s no fool, the konungdis.”

  Úlfketill gave the card another glare, then the notes in his other hand, and then a great snort erupted from his nose. “The world has gone mad. I suppose I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “No, I shouldn’t wonder either,” I said.

  He blinked at me and I seen the corner of his mouth tug.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “You’ve delivered your message. Please tell her Majesty I will do as she commands, immediately.”

  “You’ve my thanks and hers,” I said, and then I left.

  ~~~

  Leika was pacing, walking clean through the room like her eyes weren’t dark. I watched, sitting in an armchair what was nowt but angles in her boudoir. “Boudoir” was a word I only ever seen in books up ’til I met Finnarún. Finnarún’s apartments had a boudoir—Finnarún’s bedroom lay just beyond—and it was the same with Leika’s. Seemed to me it was just a fancy word for “private salon,” but then, we didn’t have too many “salons” where I come from, neither.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, pausing to stand by the only window in all of her apartments. It looked out on a garden what hid like a secret in a pocket of the palace, if you could call the sculpted trees and geometrically laid out flowers a garden. The window had fancy bars on it curving in even lines. Them bars weren’t
just for show, neither. I know, for if Leika weren’t checking them every night she had me do it. Still, I liked looking out on that garden. There was a linden tree—a small one, in a pot—and it made me think of Dag, and not so’s it hurt my heart so much. Maybe a little, but I liked looking at it all the same. Just now, the light from the garden slanted in and lit Leika like a fairy from an old tale, and how could I not see how lovely she was in that light? In the shadows of the royal apartments, with her starring eyes full of darkness, I never thought her a beauty. But there, in the sun, I seen it clear and brilliant. Whatever else she was, and whatever else she’d done, she’d suffered when the city fell, like all of us. I’d no way to be sure, but I reckoned she’d been sane, before. She’d had her sight, sure enough. She’d lost plenty, and no mistake.

  “Your highness?” I said, to show I was listening.

  “You’re telling me that… that story is—it’s in the Elga?” she asked.

  I held the heavy volume Ivarr’d given me on my knees. “Yes, your highness. I read it just as it’s written.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said again, and her voice had a lost note in it what made my heart ache for her.

  “Ain’t you never heard a story where Tyr’s followers lost ’fore now?” I asked.

  She grimaced, her face pivoting towards me though her eyes didn’t find me. “Never,” she said, and shuddered. “More than that troubles me, however. They were—they were foolish. It was their own misguided choice that led to their deaths. They trusted the wrong people—how could Tyr allow it?”

  I’d never considered where Leika come from, aside from knowing she grew up in some flash estate on the mainland. Finnarún said she was sheltered. I’d never considered how much—it seemed her family’d raised her on nowt but stories of Tyr’s greatness, sure enough, without a hint of true history or the real stories of the Gods.

  “Begging your pardon, your Majesty,” I said gentle-like, reminding myself that Leika weren’t the most steady-minded on a good day. “But it sounds as though there’s a fair number of books you’ve never encountered.”